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Revenues in the Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) (APeJ) print services
market, which includes Managed Print Services (MPS) and Basic Print
Services (BPS), will cross the US$6 billion barrier by 2017. According
to the International Data Corporation (IDC),
2014 will be a pivotal year for market expansion into broader customer
segments as well as further market growth.

The move away from hardware toward managed print services proves how
vendors have taken advantage of the opportunity by offering multiyear
business and customer cost savings and by strengthening the agility of
the workspace with modernized technology.

"IDC (News - Alert) sees fundamental transformation taking place in both vendor
offerings and customer expectations in the MPS market," said Jessie
Lee, Research Manager, Imaging, Printing, and Document Solutions.
"Future success in the MPS market will come as a result of tapping into
new opportunities by providing 'best-in-class' services and expanding
into 'sweet-spots' across the Enterprise to Midmarket segment. In 2014,
both quality (securing renewal and developing best practices) and
penetration (channel program and developing new logos) will have
significant impact on the MPS market, based on the maturity of vendors
and the country."

Best-in-class experience

This strategy will be critical for vendors to sustain customer value,
provide differentiation, secure renewals, and generate best practices
that will be symbolic references in similar customer clusters or
vertical markets.

Vendors will use MPS to drive more transformative opportunities
revolving around digital capture, workflows, cloud integration, and
mobile printing enablement. IDC expects greater integration with IT
services and business process outsourcing engagements and a growing
focus on vertical and line-of-business solutios.

Customers (large enterprises in maturing economies, in particular) are
taking a holistic approach that factors MPS into the workspace strategy
and ensures this is tied to the mobility, cloud, social business, and
big data analytics agenda. This expectation will become more prevalent
as enterprises plan productive and innovative workspaces for their
employees.

The demands of the future work environment are determined by the
maturity of the country and its vertical industries. IDC finds Australia
to be the most mature market (over 30% market share in APeJ). Financial
Services and Manufacturing are the leading vertical markets (up to 47%
in APeJ) while Education is gaining momentum.

IDC believes vendors must promote their capabilities and continue to
develop software/solution offerings with high service levels.

Expansion into "Sweet Spots"

IDC believes that Enterprise (Very Large Businesses with more than 1000
employees, and Large Businesses with 500-999 employees) will be the
initial segment to drive MPS adoption. The Midmarket (Medium Businesses
with 100-499 employees) is another important segment as the
decision-making process is quicker and there are fewer objections to
outsourcing services by multi-tasking IT departments.

In 2014, IDC expects businesses to further fine tune their
customer-targeting strategies in accordance with specific customer
requirements.

Large companies require "best-in-class" experience with customization
and seem to be more accepting of the transition to solutions leveraging
IT trends such as cloud, mobility, social business, and big data.
Vendors will need to analyze target customers and invest direct sales
and service resources to drive revenue mainstream.

Although the Midmarket has the potential to grow, extensive customer
coverage and low ROI on direct resource investments is a pain point for
vendors. In view of the business momentum in the indirect channel
segment, IDC expects channel partners, including resellers, system
integrators, and vertical influencers, to be a crucial part of the
ecosystem to reach into Midmarket organizations to gain access to more
lucrative MPS/BPS business.

Determining the success of channel MPS/BPS will heavily depend on
sophisticated program design (margin analysis, resource readiness,
target horizontal/vertical segmentation, split of R&R, training, and
lead generation by co-marketing) to avoid channel conflict scenarios and
generate more partners in the MPS/BPS ecosystem.

To illustrate these market opportunities, two interactive graphics
showing APeJ managed print services market share by vertical industry
and by company size are available here.
The charts are intended for public use in online news articles and
social media. Instructions on how to embed the graphics can be found by
clicking the Share link at the top of each graphic.

For more information about the research or to purchase this data, please
contact Sheryl Fuertez at +65-6829-7758 or sfuertez@idc.com.

About IDC

International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of
market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information
technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. IDC
helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment
community to make fact-based decisions on technology purchases and
business strategy. More than 1,000 IDC analysts provide global,
regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities
and trends in over 110 countries. For the past 50 years, IDC has
provided strategic insights to help our clients achieve their key
business objectives. IDC is a subsidiary of IDG,
the world's leading technology media, research, and Events Company. You
can learn more about IDC by visiting www.idc.com.